Ten Years as a Financial Planner

Good morning, Emily. Welcome back. Did I go somewhere? You've been gone for the last week. Yeah, that's right. All right, well, fair enough. I'm back. Thank you. What are we talking about this week? The big occasion. You have lost me again. This is the 10-year anniversary of your financial planning practice. So we're talking about the experience over the last decade, what's going on presently, and what we can all look forward to. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Science of Wealth, where we discuss the science behind financial planning and the art of learning and applying it. I feel like I did a history episode last year. Are we just doing the history again? Am I just telling my sad story twice? Maybe. We sure can if you want to. But I do have some thoughts. All right, well, let's hear your thoughts then. Well, first, we have to look back, right? It's been the 10 years. Has this whole experience been what you expected? Not really. I wouldn't even go so far as to say, not at all. It's interesting, because if I go back to before I officially started-- so I started on July 16th and 2015-- but I went through four to gosh, five months of prep training and stuff through Dillon Reed, where I wasn't officially activated of studying for my licenses and building a business plan and all this sort of stuff. And it's funny, because I remember at one point during it, I was like, I'm going to make most of my money, if not all of my money, from financial planning. I don't know, but the insurance investment stuff. All right, well, surprise is a good change is good. What would you say has been the most pleasant surprise then in these last 10 years? That I made it, honestly. Like everybody starts in this business doesn't think they're going to fail, but statistically, you know the odds are against you. And thinking about all the people I started with, they started a little bit before me, a little bit after me. I'm super grateful to still be practicing the financial planner and not only to survive to the survival curve once, but twice, right? Because there's the getting started in the career, even with a big company, and then fast forward to going independent. And you hope people will follow you, and you hope people work with you, but the truth of the matter is they might just not do that. Sure. What is the average success rate for this industry? So across the entire industry, like all animals, all career paths, et cetera, 30% after five years are still in this. And I mean, that's not-- it's not great or-- OK, it's not great. Because some extent, that includes people who work in like call centers, or who work in ranches of banks, or people who have even weak salaries, starting jobs. Like you technically are not past the survival curve of our industry yet. But on the other side of that, like in the people who started practice, people who eat what they kill, live entirely off of business they develop, et cetera. Like I did, that survival rates about 13% over the first four years. So yeah, like again, I'm really grateful to have made it, but like it's kind of brutal and nasty out there. Oh, well, that teased me up for my next kind of question is what was the worst surprise, as long as we're talking negative here? Yeah, but I think the worst surprise, honestly, was sort of the disappointment that comes with it. Like it's one thing to sort of think about doing this sort of thing, or starting a business in like a hypothetical. And like you logically and intellectually know that not everybody you talk to or that you know is going to want to support you in this business or can support you in this business. But they're hard to separate the emotional impact of that in reality when it happens. So like talking to old co-workers, colleagues, family members, et cetera. And in very degrees, right? Some people are just like very polite like, hey, sorry, that's not for me. And that was better. But then I think the two worst versions for people either would lead you on for a while, and then just sort of ghost you or stop for spawning or would just waste a bunch of your time. And then just like, yeah, I'm OK. Or the alternative would be people that you just like were 100% certain would be behind you who just showed absolutely no support and interest. I think that's one of the hardest parts in any business, right? Not just in a financial planning business, right? You open a bakery and like your dad never tries your bagels, you know, like whatever it is. Like that's going to be one of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship in general. And then I think in financial planning, because it's such a high trust occupation and high trust type of business, it's one of those things where you're like, I know what I'm going to do for you. I know I'm going to do my best for you. It's hard for the people to trust you on that. But then it's hard to separate their lack of trust in what you're doing from a lack of trust in you. Is that gotten easier with time where you take it less personally maybe? Or it still is just always kind of hard? A little call on me, a little call on me. It's easier in so far as I'm much less interested in the outcome anymore, right? And I think this is a luxury that comes with getting past that survival curve. Is once you get to a point where you technically don't ever need another client again, you can sort of be less engaged and less involved in it. I may even now it's sort of a point where, like, if you were a friend or family from back in the day, you never became a client and you have to become a client today, my answer is going to heavily depend on whether I like you or not. I am whether I actually want to work with you, as opposed to like on day one. Great. You want to give me five cents. I can do that. You know, like you're just willing to take anything and everything in the early days and today. You know, like half my family could ask, and I'd be like, you know, I think you're a great, wonderful, and nothing, thank you. Or you could work with family or you could work with Daniel, but I'm not going to be working with you personally. And same thing for a lot of friends and colleagues from back in the day that if they sort of hold around now, we're like, hey, you know, I started years ago. And now I have a need for what you do. I'd be like, thanks for your interest. You can work with Daniel and Emily. But I wouldn't take those people directly. And that's just sort of a thing that becomes a luxury over time that you're able to adapt to based on necessity versus convenience and quality of life. Right. Yeah, I'm so closer to the other end of things. So that's interesting to look forward for me anyway. Did I mention converting to a 100% eat-weight-you-kill model in your future? I don't want to have to look for a new job, Dad. That's so much work. You're almost breaking even, almost. So I think I can take you to some rope. See, that's exciting. So you first hired me. Could you have imagined that? Well, I mean, that was the thing, right? You looked at this job. You looked at other jobs in the industry. And all the other jobs were really just sales things saying, hey, you're going to have to call up your mom and dad and ask him to do business with you. And that's going to be the job. And you almost didn't even interview for this because you weren't certain that this was different. Yeah, that's true. I was like, well, I'll just go interview with this company and see if they're being honest or not. But I didn't put a lot of stock in the interview. Well, I mean, good news turns out we weren't lying. That's true. This worked out for both of us so far, at least on my end. I think it's worked out for me. I mean, again, you haven't quite broken even yet. But qualitatively, we'll save you page your way. Yes, there we go. I'll take what I can get at this stage, which lines up perfectly for my ex-question. Is there anything that you would do differently, Dan, for the whole firm, all these years, anything so far? I think the challenge of answering that question-- and I think I even actually wrote about this in LinkedIn recently-- this is kind of my least favorite question. Because I know the outcome. And the outcome is wonderful. And it's incredible. And I love every day of my life now and so on and so forth. Everything is great. But if I don't know the outcome, or if it's just like, hey, give it another try. Roll the dice again. And it's going to be completely different. But maybe it'll be better. Maybe it'll work. You'll find out. I would not do this at all. And not being a financial planner specifically, but I would not have started a practice. I would have looked way harder, searched way harder, done whatever I could to get your kind of job to start, and made a transition in that way into the industry. And even then, knowing what I knew now, that it's worked out so and so forth, I think that would have been a much better path for me anyway. There's a lot of like the mother of inventions or learning for me, experience for me, and building a practice for some sort of action, so on, where I'm definitely a better financial planner. And I'm definitely a bit professional, and I'm definitely a better business owner. And so and so forth. For having had all these experiences and having had to do it the really hard way. But that doesn't mean it was worth the stress or the anxiety or the damage that happened along the way. And so at that extent, removing that the outcome is wonderful and I wouldn't change anything now. If I was going to go back 10 years, it would have been, don't start a practice. It would have been, look a lot harder, work a lot harder to get a job somewhere where you can build experience and perspective, so on, and maybe start a practice later. I think that would have been my big, going back in the time machine, hey, don't blow off the facility interview that you blew off because they offered it five months in after you applied, and you were already all the time to start your career somewhere else, take that interview and see what's on the other side of it. Right. Well, could I ask, maybe you let this out? I don't know. But do you like being a business owner now that you are and it's successful and it's working all that? Or, you know, because there's a lot of stress. It's a lot of extra time. You're always doing a lot of extra-- the rest of us don't have to do because we don't know in this place, you know? You know, it's funny, right? There's this sort of joke that once you become an entrepreneur, you become unemployable. It's not quite true. You actually made a lot of unintentional or incidental entrepreneurs in this field, right? Even somebody who works, let's say W2, it like an Edward Jones, even though they are always an employee, they're essentially being held to an entrepreneurial standard. You know, they just happen to have a lot more support on certain parts of that, but giving that particular sense, I think, to some extent, like I enjoy it now. I don't really mind the stress or the extra work of that sort of stuff. I like having fun or work on things like none of that bothers me, but I mean, it's an point, I always met this last weekend rereading, T2, which is a terrific book on, you know, kind of first generation founders and second generation financial planners. And it makes a really big point on one hand, like yes, you've sweat, you've blood sweat, tears and all that being an entrepreneur. And also just because you suffer through that, doesn't mean that other people need to suffer through that to do a good job or be good professionals, or be good business owners and partners. So all that to say, you know, I like being a business owner, now, again, that I'm on the other side of it, but the journey to do there is not particularly fun. Do you think that stems from like, you know, our slightly bigger team now? We're not huge, but there's a couple people working here, the few of us, and you know, you have people around you versus like even when I started and it was just the two of us, it's just you and I. Is there a big difference there being the boss for the two of us versus like a small team now? Not so much. I'm becoming a bigger appreciator of some wisdom from one of my colleagues, Brandon Ratzluff, who runs Practice Town in Texas, he says, you know, his favorite thing about being a financial planner is working with the clients and doing the work and all of that. And his least favorite thing is managing people. And I don't mind managing people, but I know what he's talking about in that his dislike comes from sort of the things that as the business manager, business owner feel sort of petty from time to time, you know, like, oh, this person doesn't like that, this person brings fish for lunch or this person is annoyed that this person got promoted fast, remember this person doesn't like that they didn't get this account like whatever. All those things are not as fun in terms of making this a sonner, but I don't really mind being on bigger teams, you know, when I was in the army, when I was at IBM, I worked on teams anywhere from three to like several hundred people. So sort of indifferent to the size of the team, it's just a different time amount of time energy and leadership you can provide. You know, for example, the investor, this podcast was largely in part to the fact that before we had other people on the team, you know, I would take 30 minutes an hour almost every day and just sit and like talk to you and answer your questions about financial planning or financial topics. And we're just continuing that today in a medium where other people can listen to it and hear it. That's true. Well, I have a lot of questions, you know, I like to know how things work. I'm pretty sure that if there was ever like a filibuster needed like in Congress or the Senator something and they needed somebody to fill in the time and you're allowed to talk to somebody else's part of the filibuster, they could just hire you to filibuster forever. Oh, I'm so ready. I think it's so funny and the first year I worked here, I was in all your meetings, but just as like the silent observer, a note taker, right, I wasn't supposed to talk and give it to you. So all of your clients back then were like, oh yeah, you're so quiet, you're so whatever. And I'd meet them at some event and I was like, no, absolutely not. I just am supposed to be in meetings. I love talking. I'm ready. Yeah. And I mean, that's, you know, part of the learning curve, there's sort of this thing about like paying your dues. That's not quite what it is when it's the observing thing. It's more of a regulatory like, hey, if you're not allowed to give advice, don't get into a position where you're going to accidentally give advice in these meetings. But yeah, I mean, that's sort of the interesting part of this is functionally a big chunk of what we do with our days is just have great conversations by either with each other or with clients. Yeah, that's the fun part. I love getting to know people. I get to ask them a ton of questions. It's great. I mean, you could have just been a journalist. I know. Or a therapist. I think I would love being a therapist because I like hearing about people's personal lives in detail. So that sounds fun to me. You know, it's interesting that you say that because I think we have sort of a joke that we're marriage counselor sometimes as financial planners. So I think that, you know, tongue and cheek nature, that comment means we don't quite get the same burnout. But therapist burnout's like a real, real issue out there because I think to some extent you get maybe tired of hearing different versions of the same types of problems. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure there's some therapists out there who's like, I've been in this for 60 years. I'm going to do this until I literally die. Like, I love every conversation I have. But it is something that I think about occasionally is like, I think the the hot goss factor of being a therapist makes it interesting. And then you realize like, man, a lot of people just did not get enough hugs. Yeah, that's probably she would have my close friends as a therapist and she does hear a lot of stressful things at work. All right. Well, let's kind of get back on track at your 10. Do you have any advice for any analysis looking to start their own business since you're a successful business owner now? I mean, advice on starting a business. Get way more runway than you think you're going to get. Be way more conservative about your expectations on like your financial model and break even. You really just give yourself the time and the space to not fail. I think most businesses are overly optimistic and you've got to be an optimist to start a business, right? You even have that experience. You know that. But to some extent, I don't think anybody prepares well enough or as well as they could. And I think probably a lot more businesses would succeed or survive. If people are more patient about the timing and how they were going to go about launching them and getting them out there into the world, you know, like I started my practice with $5,000 in my savings account. And if you listen to the podcast on the history, you know that ran out in like a month and a half. Not my greatest decision as a financial planner, but that was something where overly optimistic that things would go well early on and just sort of pick up from there and it took way longer and a lot more time than you would have expect to get where you wanted to. Yeah, that's a big risk. And your otherwise like a fairly conservative guy, I feel like most of the time, especially when we're building plans and stuff, it's interesting to me that you personally did not take that advice at the time. Well, I don't think I understood the business model as well as I should have is probably part of the problem. Like I still remember talking to the district manager at Woodell and Reed and being like, how do we get paid out and we make money? And he had like this fairy on his dancers like, well, you know, we'll get paid a percentage of money we manage or sometimes you're going to sell the insurance policy or investment and you're going to get paid a percentage of that. Yada yada. And like in my head, the numbers, he was throwing out like really casual numbers like, oh, you know, like you might invest a hundred thousand dollars for somebody and then you're going to get paid like a percent over the course of a year. But then like you're going to get 60 percent. My brain's just like, wow, like it's a thousand dollars just to open an account. Cool. Like that's going to be so easy. Oh, it's not. But like that's sort of the over optimistic thing where you just sort of go like, well, surely it'll work out just fine. And then turns out there's a reason a lot of people fail in this business. Yeah. Okay, well, that tracks. Do you have any specific callouts for people that you'd like to thank that like guy you hear or, you know, really helped you along the process here? I mean, the list here is really, really long. So I'm not going to, I'll do a couple of shout outs here just because of these people smile if they hear their names. You know, I'll say Jared and Ryan, thanks for getting me on boarded and in the door and so on. I'll say Sally and John, thanks for being the one phone call I made before I put the the letter in the mailbox to make the transition. I'll say a big, big, Sheila, Chris, Lewis, Alisha, Lauren, Torrey, the bandy, you know, a whole bunch of folks who absolutely gave me way more trusting confidence that they should have in the first year. Thank you, all of you. I would not have made it without literally any of you. If even one of you had changed your mind or not gone forward, we would not have survived. So I really just want to say thank you. You know, I know there's a really big shout out for Jeff and Anthony. Last time I talked about the history of the practice, but I think I'm literally out staying in business to Jeff, I really am. Thank you for making that referral in the first place. So thank you. Thank you everybody and be out to the several hundred people who've come along since just the first few days and first few months. All of you have been meaningful, men, you know, kind of participants in this journey. You know, every small business is the accumulation of the confidence in faith people put in its goods and its services. And functionally, what most people are buying for the first five, six years of this practice was just, hey, dancing like a smart guy and you think he can help me with my money. And I don't take that for granted. You know, I've received these awards and accolades. Recognitionist time has gone on, but there was a time where somebody was just trusting the 25 year old kid that they knew at IBM to take over their life savings. And that was a heck of a leap of faith on your purse. Thank you for it. Wow. Their heartfelt moment on the podcast. I like that. All right. All right. Now, the only emotions you'll ever garner from me. I know. I've been trying for like two years working here and it doesn't, it's rare. You are pretty even killed. This is the highest praise you could pay me. Why? I'm going to keep working on it. You know, how I am. All right. We'll stop looking at the past. Let's talk present day now. All right. You're super busy. You're running the practice. You're always mentoring. As you said, you're spending hours per day sometimes talking to us here. You're serving on several boards. All these things. Is there an intention to continue all of these things as you do? I mean, yeah, that's the easiest answer I can give. It's just yes. I have reached the phase where, and there's sort of this expression about success means saying no to most of the things you're asked to do. I'm definitely at that stage where I get an ask pretty much every day from somebody for console quick 15 minutes. Can you know, we pick your brain about this chat with you about that? Would you be willing to serve on this task force or this committee? And here's the thing, given unlimited time and resources I'd be happy to do all of it. but I am at the point where I do have to say no more often than I say yes, because that means I then have to reserve the time and energy and attention for things to really give it what it deserves versus doing everything badly, although in total fairness, my friend Autumn has asked me many times like I don't know how you do it, and my answer is always just do everything badly. So for better or worse, you know, you're all getting my 1% effort apparently, but that's sort of just the baseline answer is, you know, I love mentoring, I love teaching, I love running this practice, I love working with clients, I love serving in the community, I love serving on boards and impacting the profession, I love the research stuff that I've gotten to do over the years, like everything that I do today and that I have done is something that I have no intention of stopping until life gets in the way more or less. Wow, well, I guess it's good that you are the greatest multitasker I've ever seen in my entire life, maybe that helps with all of these things that you're doing. Again, I'm just doing everything badly. Okay, so what about things, for example, like you've given a ton of timing resources to like our local chamber of commerce, like quite a bit actually, things like that, why are things like that so important to you? Why do you encourage community involvement so much? You know, it's a weird answer, but I've lived in the long run area in some way, shape or form on and off for about 23 years at this point. I moved here when I was 12 with my parents and you know, I went to middle school here, high school here, I moved away from the army, I came back working for IBM, I started my practice here, and I bring all that context up to say that even though I probably lived in Longmont for about 10 years before I started my practice, I don't think I understood Longmont or the community or the depth of relationships that exist here until I got into financial planning and started being more engaged in the community. Like, I would say in loose terms that like I lived here and I went to restaurants here before I became a financial planner. Like I paid rent and apartment or I lived with my parents, I went to school, you know, but like I didn't have any involvement in this community and it's such a heartwarming and sort of validating thing to just be engaged in the community to go out somewhere and have somebody recognize you to, you know, be able to see a project that you were talking about three years ago become a reality to be able to help you fundraise or write the checks that make something possible that makes an impact in people's lives. You know, I think in the digital era, particularly as sort of a 90s child who sort of grew up as the internet was becoming mainstream, it's really easy to get kind of insulated in your hobbies and your interests that don't involve other people like I like video games and video games involve other people kind of but not in like a serious way and it's easy to just be like, oh, I derive all the enjoyment in my life from a thing that's in my home that I will never have to see other people or be involved in my community. And so being involved in your community is just this really rewarding thing and I think it's not been lost per se because people are obviously still doing it but I think it's something that a lot of people are missing out on and don't really appreciate much kind of how much value it brings to your life to be engaged in a community. So, you know, I can say we were a certified B-Corp and we volunteer at least 100 hours per person. I think you're on track to do like 300 hours this year or something, right? Like we make it a big part of our values and our focus is affirms that be involved in the community and be engaged and I'd love to see if that's purely altruistic but the truth is it might be one of the best things that we get to do with our time more so than even practicing financial planning or something like that. Wow, I get two heartfelt moments on this podcast. That was better than I expected. No, boss. No, boss. Okay, I'll switch to my next one. I won't linger. I promise. This is kind of. All right, so you finished your PhD recently. You're Dr. Dan and we've done a whole podcast about that. So, we won't get into it but are you at least kind of enjoying your theoretical break now that you're doing that and maybe doing more hobbies or trip planning or anything fun or you're still locked into work mode? I really actually need to get back to it more. It's like the CFP board released its first round of a data set with longitudinal data on the efficacy of financial planning and I did a big outreach back in like May to a bunch of colleagues being like, hey, we want to form like a study group on this. We can get really good with this data set and we can do a lot more like papers and research and then the ground floor of my house flooded and I promptly have not done anything with it. So actually in fact, I need to get back to doing more research stuff. It really has been sort of side blind since I finished my defense back in March. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. All right, that sounds like Dan. Let's start looking forward now, then. Are there future plans for my wealth planners that you're willing to share with everyone? Sure. So we went through the entrepreneurial operating system sort of establishment exercise over the last quarter where we talked about, you know, really digging in on our values, really digging in our core focus and who we do our best work with. So I'm in so forth. And you'll see more stuff around this, the other website will get changed, our content, and our materials and marketing stuff and so on. We'll get updated. But we really made a decision that functionally we are going to be the best financial planning firm here in Longmont. And I would say we actually already are today, but I want to move the needle on that to the point that it's an unimpeachable fact. And so, as much engagement as we do in the community, volunteering, donations, all the various things we do there. We're only going to do more of that going forward. You know, I look at it's taken 10 years to get to this point and 10 years from now, I want to be un-missable in terms of how people think about financial planning and what financial planning can do and has done in this community, both on a community impact level that also for people individually, for their families, for the people that they care about, the causes that they care about. And so, if they have the biggest plan here, or anybody who's looking at the practice today with the four of us, expect us to be two, three, four times larger, 10 years from now, expect us to be somebody that you have friends or family members who you think would never have known about us, or saying like, "Oh, yeah, that company, that firm." That's what we're going to do for the next 10 years. We are going to get deep in this community, even deeper than we already have been. You're going to see us on your communities, you're going to see us on your boards, you're going to see our logo in our name at your public events as sponsors, as people donating their time and energy and effort. And we're going to do what we've done for the last 10 years, and we're going to do it 100 times more. That is what we're going to do next 10 years. Very good goal is very lofty, and I'm very excited to be a part of that. It sounds like that you're not thinking of retiring earlier, becoming a lifestyle practice kind of guy. You personally plan to be heavily involved in this for another 10 years at least? I'm probably going to have to get dragged out kicking and screaming at some point, you're all going to vote me off the aisle and one day when your partners are something to get me out of here. But no, I have no intention of stopping this or slowing this down. My direct hands-on thing, back to the comment about having to say no to more things, it's probably going to have to keep shifting and evolving as time goes on. But we're going to stay here. We were long months first, feel on the financial planning firm. In some degree, I want people to think of us as the only feel on the financial planning firm here in terms of just, there may be others, but why would you go somewhere else? I think by extension from that, as far as being a lifestyle practice, I don't even know what I would do with that. The economics are here, we could for anybody listening, just either the context here, we could fire at the bottom 70% of our client roster, and also Emily and Daniel and all the wonderful people here. I could just work with the top 30% of our client roster, and I would make probably twice as much money as I do today. That's what Emily means by being a lifestyle practice, just having the ultra-lean practice with my most profitable, most enjoyable clients, and just having a great quality of life. I already have a great quality of life, and I would rather continue to have a bigger impact on this community and on the world at large, then I would enjoy working less or taking more vacations. I was technically on vacation for the last six days, boy, that is a vacation that could have been an email. So for better or worse, I am here to stay. Well, what if things change? What if you want to go on a big trip with Caitlin or you have kids or whatever? I don't know what your future holds, but would you ever take a step back for a very short period or you'll just make it all work? I think taking a step back is the wrong way to think about that. I think that just becomes another version of the saying "no" where it's saying "look, I'm not going to take a step back from the practice, I'm not going to take a step back from my community engagement, my board memberships, etc. But I am going to be much more deliberate and thoughtful about setting boundaries with those things to say, look, I'm going to be present for my wife, for my kids, for all those things that come to be in the future. That functionally, I can do both. It's just going to involve me being clear about the boundaries that I have to sit around those things. So it's not so much a stepping back or quitting things or so on, but it's saying "no" to even more things. And it's saying "no" to the scope creep of things I'm already doing. Okay, because yeah, you touched on wanting to do more research, is there any intention to write more books or put out content like that or your content with the podcast and the blog and the things you're already doing? I keep new to the link on doing a personal finance book like in the spirit of how do you save, how do you invest, how do you insure, etc. My hesitation around that comes from a fact that there's so many vanity financial planning books out there, probably, I don't know, like one in 20 financial planners has a personal finance book. Most of them are not very good. I don't think mine would be much better. So like it's not a ego thing. It's more of a, I'm not sure that the world needs another personal finance book, but if I'm new to like not anything, it's getting one of those out there. If only sort of to do something similar to what the podcast does, which is just say like look, here's a passive medium of education. versus one-to-one education, as a lot of people ask for, something we can give to every client or potential clients and saying, look, here's how to think about saving, here's how to think about investing, here's how to think about your risk management, so on, right, so that we are better educated in the general sense, and we can spend more of our time with you on higher efficacy things. That makes sense, so it'd be good. Well, I look forward to reading it if you ever get there. Maybe, or just, you know, chat GPT and have it, you know, snap together five years of blogs into something, I'm sure that would be a complete nightmare. It seems to me what some people are doing these days. All right, well, that brings me to the part where I get to flip the script a little bit. What have you learned recently, Dan, since we're talking about you today? You know, it's interesting because it all happens a lot faster than you'd think it would. Like, I still have a keen memory of what happened in the first year and the second year and the third year. Like, I remember how exciting it was to bring on Sheila as a client and how she was the biggest client I've ever brought on. And I remember how impactful it was that I had like a referral from her referral from her referral, you know, when I first, when I brought on Dana and Dennis, you know, and it's that impact where it's always this uniquely individual human thing, where I've worked with hundreds of clients, hundreds of families and, you know, small businesses and so on. And yet, even today, you know, 10 years on, my perspective on it is just so curious to me because, like, when I went independent, even, you know, for what I was four years in thinking about leaving what Ellen Reed and starting my own fully independent practice that I ended up doing, you know, my goal that year before I was thinking about going independent was I was going to try to do 210,000 revenue that year. And I was on track for it and that was very exciting. And the year I looked really independent, you know, I was just worried about making like 120, 130, you know, being able to pay my bills and being able to keep the practice running and, you know, all those various things that really needed to go into it. And as time came on or went through, the thing that really kind of sticks out to me is now right five and a half years on from that time. You know, we're now five times bigger than that. Right, we're going to clear million dollars revenue this year. We're going to work with, you know, not quite, not quite three times as many clients, but we'll probably have over 200 households and small businesses we're working with by the end of this year. And the scale of things is just very different. And that happens very quickly in a way that, you know, when you think about something like hyperbolic discounting, that I, you know, principle that we're bad at compounding math. I don't think I ever could have imagined that the practice was going to be where it is today five years ago. And when I think about, you know, going out under 10 years from now, like I have a vision, you know, we have rocks in a 10 year vision, a three year vision, all this sort of stuff. But I'll be fascinated to see what it actually looks like when we get there. Yeah. Well, now just say congratulations on your 10 years then Dan and we're looking forward to the next 10 at least. Oh, thanks. You know, though, I'm actually still going to take your reversal here and an Overseer here for a second, because you've now been here as long as anybody has functionally. So I'll ask, right, when you came aboard two years ago to now, what looks different or what do you think about things today? As far as how you're understanding your perspective has changed. I would say it's very, very, very different than what I expected. I mean, we touched on a little bit. I almost didn't come to the interview because I thought, you know, the finance industry has that reputation of being not very personal, kind of slimy. You hear bad things about, you know, people selling policies just to get the commission stuff like that. So that was kind of the impression I had of the world of finance and I was very, very wary of that. I think I remember we're fairly early on telling you that if you wanted me to do anything that I felt was evil, I was going to quit. And I stand by that, but I don't worry about that anymore. I do. I've found that the job that I have now actually requires a lot of personal human connection and getting to know people and doing what's best for them. It actually is very personally tailored. And I kind of thought that was just like a buzzword or a phrase or something we tell people because you hear, oh, holistic this, comprehensive that, like it's everywhere, right? But I have found that it actually very much so is, which was a pleasant surprise that suits my personality. It is much better than I anticipated. And I have actually enjoyed educating also like the people around me, like my friends and family who don't know a lot about it. I grew up with not a lot. So like my family is not overly financially literate or anything like that. And I wouldn't say that into my friends really worry there because we're all young. It's not like any of us have millions of dollars yet. So it's also been fun in my personal life to teach and educate and dedicate. Actually, this is what you should be doing. And this is how this goes. And I've got a lot of fulfillment out of that and I've really enjoyed myself. Well, thanks for showing up to the interview. Thank goodness for that. And thanks to Heidi for letting me borrow a skirt. Well, it's all worked out in the end. So thanks for that. And thank you, Heidi. The Science of Wealth is produced by my Wealth planners, the registered investment advisor in Colorado. The theme song is This is Your Time by Dan Phillips. The podcast is intended for educational purposes only and is not investment advice or any other form of advice. Not all material discussed on the podcast is appropriate for every individual in every circumstance. So you should consult with a certified financial planner, tax professional or legal professional as appropriate before attempting to apply any of the subjects, strategies, or tactics discussed on the podcast.